The Gods of Amyrantha Read online

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  For Susie, Edwina, Ashley, John and all the wonderful people at Oscars—best restaurant in the galaxy

  Contents

  Low Tide

  Prologue

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Part II

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Part III

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Epilogue

  Low Tide

  Prologue

  Three thousand years ago. Prior to the Fourth Cataclysm…

  The hardest thing about torturing someone, Balen decided, was trying not to empathise with your victim’s pain. You had to distance yourself from it. Detach that part of you which was human and make sure it stayed detached.

  Most of all, you had to remind yourself the creature you were torturing wasn’t really human.

  The latter wasn’t easy. Lyna looked human. With her long dark hair and her soulful dark eyes, she looked more like Balen’s married daughter than a monster.

  Balen closed his eyes for a moment, trying to shut out her screaming. I’m doing this because I have to, he reminded himself, tossing the severed hand on the forge’s glowing coals. There must be a way to kill these creatures.

  The disembodied hand browned and burned, the leaking blood hissing and spitting. It smelt horribly reminiscent of last night’s roast.

  It’s not logical to think something cannot die.

  Logical or not, they’d had no luck killing their captive immortal so far.

  Perhaps they’d used up all their luck just finding her. But with the Tide on the rise, and the immortals with it, they were much less careful, these days, about hiding their identities. Balen and his compatriots would never have had a chance of capturing a true Tide Lord. Lyna, fortunately, was one of the lesser immortals. She didn’t have the power to do the sort of damage someone like Cayal or Pellys or Tryan could do. She could touch the Tide, sure enough—all the immortals could—but she didn’t seem to be able to do much with it.

  That was fortunate. If she’d been a Tide Lord…if the Tide had peaked…well, given what they’d done to her these past few weeks, if she’d been able to wreak any sort of vengeance on them, they’d all be dead.

  And probably everyone within a hundred-mile radius, as well.

  Bracing himself, Balen turned to look at her. Naked and filthy, Lyna lay on the floor of her cell, curled into a foetal position, weeping with the pain of her amputation. Despite the burns, the stab wounds, even the hand he’d just amputated to see if she would bleed to death, the rest of her body was whole and unmarked. Everything he’d done to her had healed, and the more traumatic the injury, the faster she seemed to recover from it.

  Tides, what’s it going to take?

  Perhaps these unnatural creatures truly were immortal. Perhaps there was no end for them. Ever. Perhaps, some unimaginable time in the future when the universe grew cold, they would still be here, alone and alive, with nothing but their endless existence to sustain them…

  It’s not possible, Balen assured himself. Besides, until we reach the end of time, how will we know if they can survive that long?

  “Has she recovered again?”

  Balen looked up to find his son standing at the entrance to the smithy. The boy was morbidly fascinated by what his father was doing. A little too fascinated, perhaps. He feared the young man didn’t see the monster lying in the cage regrowing a hand his father had just hacked off, he only saw the tormented young woman. At seventeen, Minark was too young to appreciate the danger immortality presented to the mortals of this world.

  “It would appear so.”

  “Can I see her?”

  Balen frowned. “Why?”

  “I…I just can’t believe she’s not hurt.”

  Balen glanced over his shoulder at the pathetic, weeping young woman. He didn’t know how old she was exactly—five thousand…ten thousand years old? She looked little more than twenty-five, more than young enough for an impressionable youth to find her appealing. Already the bleeding had stopped and there was new bone and flesh taking shape. “She’s hurting, sure enough, Minark. But she just keeps healing up.”

  “Can I see…?”

  “No,” he said, concerned Minark was taking far too much interest in the tortured immortal’s plight. The last thing he needed was the lad sneaking back here in the dead of night to offer her sympathy. Or worse. Lyna had been a whore, after all, before she was made immortal. She’d not hesitate to use her wiles on someone as wide-eyed and credulous as his son. “What are you doing here, anyway, boy? I thought I told you to stay away from this place.”

  Minark ventured a few steps further into the smithy, straining to see past his father. “Vorak sent me.”

  Balen took a step sideways to block his son’s view of the naked young woman with her regrowing hand. “What does he want, Minark?”

  “He’s just got back from the markets in L’bekken. He said there was someone asking around in the village. About her,” he added, pointing to the immortal.

  “Did he say who it was?”

  Minark shook his head. “Just that he was asking. And he was heading this way when he left.”

  Balen cursed silently. Surely they hadn’t come for her yet? And if they had, was it one of the other lesser immortals, which would be bad enough? Or was it one of the Tide Lords themselves? He shuddered at the thought. If someon
e like Cayal or Tryan or Kentravyon discovered Lyna caged and tortured like this, everyone in this village and the neighbouring village of L’bekken would, in all probability, soon be dead.

  “This man was a stranger, yes?”

  “That’s what I said, wasn’t it?” Minark leaned a little to the left so he could catch sight of the immortal. “Did you try cutting her into smaller pieces? Vorak thought that if you fed the meat to the dogs…”

  “She heals too quickly,” he said, wishing Vorak would stop discussing his wild theories with Minark. “And the faster you cut, the faster she heals. Did Vorak think this stranger was an immortal?”

  Minark shrugged. “He didn’t say. Just to tell you someone was asking about Lyna.”

  Balen glanced over his shoulder at his prisoner, wondering if he should just let her go. She’d been blindfolded when she was overpowered in the streets of L’bekken and brought here in chains. If they took her far away from their village before they dumped her, it was unlikely she would know how to find this place again.

  But how often did one get a chance like this? How often did one capture an immortal? How often had they been able to put their theories on how to put an end to them to the test?

  The opportunity against the risk…that was Balen’s problem.

  “I warned you,” the young woman said, pushing herself up on her elbows.

  He looked over his shoulder. Lyna’s face was tear-streaked and filthy. On hearing the news someone was asking after her, she rallied her strength. A fresh stump had already formed on the end of her arm, even though it had only been minutes since he’d cut off her hand. “You’ll die for what you’ve done to me, you pathetic mortal pig.”

  “It was probably just one of your regular customers,” Balen said, hoping he sounded unafraid. “Good whores have repeat customers, I’m told, and I hear you were a very good whore.”

  She smiled, which Balen found disturbing. Three days ago, he’d beaten her so badly, most of her teeth had broken. Yet her smile now was white and even, mocking him with its unnatural perfection.

  “My brothers will level this place,” she warned, pushing herself to her feet. “They will take apart your pitiful village, kill you, your son, your wife, your grandchildren and everyone else in this valley.”

  “They have to find you first, you immortal whore!” Minark retorted gamely.

  Lyna smiled through the pain of her regenerating hand. “Find me? Tides, boy, that’s the easy part.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean we can sense each other on the Tide, you fool. If there’s another immortal around, he’ll feel my presence and there’s nothing you can do to stop him finding me, short of killing me. But you’ve tried that, haven’t you? I’ll bet you’re sorry now, that none of your brilliant little plans worked.”

  Balen had no reason to doubt her. If anything, he began to get nervous. Her growing defiance was at such odds with the lack of resistance she’d shown thus far, he had to wonder at the cause of it.

  Was her confidence brought on by the news that one of her immortal brethren was nearby?

  We can sense each other on the Tide, she’d said, which meant if another immortal could feel her presence, then she would be able to…Tides!

  “Get to the house, now!” he ordered Minark. “Tell your mother and your sister to take only what they can carry. We must flee. Now!”

  “Flee?” Minark asked in confusion. “Why must we flee? Vorak said the stranger asked about her and then moved on. Nobody told him anything.”

  “Nobody had to, Minark,” Balen said, shoving him toward the entrance to the smithy. “Didn’t you hear what she said? They can sense each other on the Tide. He’ll know she’s here. Which means he’s probably on his way. And if he finds us with her…”

  “But it might only be one of the lesser immortals, like Taryx or Rance…”

  “Are you willing to risk your mother’s life on that, son?”

  The boy hesitated for a moment longer, staring at the immortal woman, and then he turned and fled. Balen grabbed one of the hammers from his forge, shoved it into his belt in case he needed a weapon, and then turned to face Lyna. She was standing at the bars of the cage they’d fashioned to contain her. Already, short stubby fingers were protruding from the stump. Although still in pain, he guessed she was improving by the minute, her recovery accelerated, no doubt, by the sense that there was another of her kind nearby.

  “It wasn’t anything personal,” he said, as if an explanation or an apology was going to make the slightest difference at this point.

  She glared at him and held up her mangled wrist. “Trust me, Balen. You made it personal.”

  He shook his head, wondering what he hoped to achieve by lingering here, trying to explain himself. He had tortured this creature relentlessly for weeks. It was too late now to ask for forgiveness. “You must tell them…I am the one at fault here. Not my family.”

  “I’m sure that will be a great comfort to them as they’re dying.”

  Balen stared at her, only now, perhaps, realising the enormity of what he’d done. “Is there no chance of mercy?”

  Lyna studied him for a moment and then nodded. “Despite what you think, we’re not monsters, Balen. You want mercy for you and your family?” The immortal smiled coldly, showing her perfect teeth. “Then I shall see you get it.”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” she said. “It will be my pleasure, in fact when my friends arrive to free me, to recommend they show you all the mercy you showed me.”

  “If your friends arrive,” he replied gamely.

  “Oh, I think you can be sure they will,” a deep voice behind him announced.

  Startled, Balen turned to discover a stranger standing in the entrance to the forge. He was a big man, wearing leather armour, a dark crimson cloak caught up in a jewelled brooch on his right shoulder.

  “Kentravyon!” Lyna called as soon as she saw him, although Balen needed no introduction.

  He backed up against the forge. There was no hope he could defeat an immortal, certainly not a Tide Lord as powerful as Kentravyon, but he might be able to distract him long enough for the others to get away.

  “You have hurt my friend,” the immortal said, walking toward him.

  “It was…We only meant…”

  “I know what you meant to do,” Kentravyon said. He didn’t sound angry. He sounded calm. Almost disinterested. “You were trying to find a way to kill us, weren’t you?”

  Balen nodded as he felt the warm stone of the forge against his back. It was too late to run now. He had nowhere else to go.

  “It must be hard for you to deal with the notion of immortality,” the Tide Lord said as he moved closer. “I can appreciate that.”

  His tone was far more reasonable than Balen might have expected. He allowed a glimmer of hope to flicker in his soul. Perhaps the rumours he’d heard about Kentravyon were just that. Rumours…nothing else…

  The Tide Lord stopped before him. He smiled, and reached up with both hands. Balen leaned back from him, but the immortal didn’t try to strike him. He took Balen’s face between his hands with a gentleness that shocked him, smiling beatifically.

  “Poor, poor mortals,” he whispered softly, seductively. “You so badly want what we have, don’t you?”

  Balen couldn’t answer. Kentravyon’s gloved hand caressed his face. The world seemed to retreat. Even Lyna’s whimpering faded into the background…

  Kentravyon leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth and then he pulled back and smiled at Balen. “I forgive you.”

  Balen sagged with relief. “My lord…”

  “And because I forgive you, I will save you from witnessing what I’m going to do to your family. And your village. And anybody else who thinks they can torment their gods.”

  It was the look deep in the immortal’s eyes as much as his words that panicked Balen. There was forgiveness, sure enough, but it was forgiveness without reason. Balen strug
gled to break free, but the Tide Lord held him fast, moving his hands until his thumbs pressed against his eyelids.

  Slowly, Kentravyon pushed down against Balen’s eyes, until the pressure was unbearable. Balen heard someone screaming and realised it was his own voice. The pressure grew worse until he could stand it no more. The left eye collapsed a moment after the right, blood streaming from his eye sockets, his screams tasting salty as the blood mixed with his tears.

  Kentravyon let him go and he collapsed to the floor, sobbing not only for his own torment, but the pain of impending death.

  This was just a precursor, he knew. He did not have much longer to live.

  In the distance he heard a lock rattle and realised Kentravyon must have released Lyna from her cage. A moment later a foot slammed into his ribs. He grunted with the force of it, rolling onto his side to avoid a second blow. The world remained black, his ruined eyes nothing more than a gelatinous goo leaking out of his bloody eye sockets.

  “Bastard!”

  “Now, now, Lyna…that wasn’t very nice.” Kentravyon’s voice was still calm…soothing even…

  “I’m going to kill the sadistic little prick.”